“To the best of my knowledge, we’ve not had any discussions about fast-tracking weed legalization,” the governor said.
Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of the legislature cleared a ballot initiative to legalize weed during the lame duck session in December after multiple failed attempts to legalize marijuana through legislation.
Legalizing now could provide the state with some additional revenue to make up for budget shortfalls created by the pandemic.
Still, it’s not clear whether a legalization push now would be any more successful than those made over the past two years.
Senate President Steve Sweeney said he doubted the bill would fare much better now than it did before.
“I would’ve passed it if I could’ve gotten 21 votes,” he said. “The people that are opposed to it, they’re not changing their position, you know?”